A Low Energy Consumption MAC Protocol for WSN

Executive Summary

The design of an energy-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is one of the major issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In this paper, the authors present a MAC protocol adapted to a particular class of WSNs. This protocol is mainly used for nodes located in the same radio range. It could be used by WSNs dedicated to environment monitoring where each node senses a parameter periodically. In this particular case, a node executes a code during a small period and in the rest of the time it moves to a sleeping mode. Their protocol maintains a abstract ring which ensures the ordered communications and avoids collisions. The actual version of the technique is one-hop based communication. The multi-hop extension is discussed in the paper.